lou_fine

I guess you should never say never because he told me the last book that he was going to sell was his Silver Surfer 4 because everything else after that was pretty much "worthless drek" that wasn't worth grading and slabbing from his point of view. You are EXACTLY RIGHT when you say those BA and CA common books books are selling like hotcakes in today's apparent crazed marketplace. So crazy, in fact, that his 9.8 graded copy of SS 4 which fetched something like $9K would now probably go for strong 5-figures, especially considering that Heritage just sold their most recent CGC 9.8 graded copy for something ridiculous like $90K a few short months ago.

Are you talking about CAC (The green bean)? Yes, but don't we sort of have that in place already with the CVA and QES stickers which goes onto an already slabbed book if they think the book actually presents superior to the assigned CGC grade based upon a number of listed factors. Well okay, the CVA sticker appears to be generic,whereas the QES sticker is for specific superior quality factors which they have listed for you.

I think that was just a typo and he really meant 2105 since he figured none of us would be around by then to verify if he had made his committment or not. I am just glad that I never put an advanced deposit down on the book which they had been asking potential buyers to do.

Greatly appreciate your response and updates here. I assume the record smashing sales must be from collectors who were hungry and desparate to attend comic cons again at long last after being locked away from them for well over a year by now. Also probably hungry to find some bargains (no chance at all) and snap up some of those relatively common BA and CA books which they had heard have been selling at crazy crypto-like prices when slabbed in uber high grades. No doubt hoping for some of their lustre to flow down onto these books here (again no chance at all). BTW: Did you get a chance to tell Magik that what he thought were once his "worthless" books that he was just going to hang onto since they weren't worth grading and slabbing just might be worth it in todya's crazed marketplace environment?

Hey Allan; Did you attend the one at Heritage Hall a couple of weekends ago, and if so, what was the attendance like? I imagine it might have been sparesly attended since I believe that was before the provincial vaccine protocols were officially in place. Then again, I always found the one at Heritage Hall to be sparsely attended, even before this whole Covid scenario came into play.

Sadly, I don't think I will be able to make this one scheduled for tomorrow.

Exactly right when it comes to many of these so-called one-time unique books (either due to rarity or grade) from the Promise Collection auctioned off at mind numbing results that you know the final price is often driven right up there by the final 2 bidders, as everybody else has already dropped off long before the end. I clearly remembered taking part in the Jon Berk Auction on CC back a few years ago when so many of those hardly ever seen early Centaur or late Fox books with well less than a handful in the census and no known pedigrees for some issues were publicly available for the first time in several years. After bidding on them during the extended bidding sessions, you just knew after a while based upon the pacing of the bids or whatever, that it was really just between you and the one other unknown bidder. It really all came down to nothing more than a matter of which one of you two will stop hitting that bid button, as the price has already gone up by 50% or sometimes even doubled from when the other bidders had already dropped out long ago.

I actually don't think the back story for these pedigrees were the problem and certainly would have been the most interesting part of the book. My problem with the book the way that it was being planned out was the totally unnecessasy ties to the CGC grades, PQ, and their census population report which meant that the book would be effectively already out-of-date once it hit the shelves of the LCS's and bookstores. That's why I have always felt that the GA volumes of the Gerber Photo-Journal Guide will always be relevant becasue they were meant to stand alone and be good for all-time, as long as you ignored their Relative Value Index (RVI) or whatever they called it in there. Heck, although it might not be completely accurate now some almost 30 years later, I still considered their Scarcity Index (SI) of some use as it was an early attempt at estimating the number of books still in existence.

And for any true knowledgeable comic book person to put the Promise Collection books into the same ball park, let along the same room as this all-time historical and much much more complete high grade pedigree collection of GA comic books.

Well, with that many left and still unable to move them out after all these decades, they better be offering free shipping if they really do want to get rid of them.

Does this mean anybody planning to attend this show should show up early in order to fight their way past the anti-vaxxers and other protesters?

Any idea how many TMNT 1 first print would be left in their stock and if they will finally be willing to blow them out at below wholesale prices just to get rid of them after all these many long decades?

apparently two bidders put a very high price ceiling on this book, after the sale, the buyer backed out, look for it to come back on and get say 7K ish Not sure what the two of you are thinking as I would tend to lean more on the side of our long time resident analyst and good friend here, Mitch M., and say what we saw here was actually a bargain and the price on this second go round should be higher than $21K: Alright, on a more serious note, I would tend to agree with RM in his post here, even though I believe it could easily hit 5-figures again given the current market craziness and how overhyped the Promise Collection books are, and I guess we'll just have to wait and see:

Well, based upon the crazy prices that we have seen for most of the Promise books so far, this would be one of the rare exceptions to the case then.

That's exactly why I prefer the CC extended bidding model because it sort of has the best of both worlds. Each individual lot gets their own 3-minute extended bidding timer which gives you ample time to do your applicable analysis to make your decision on whether to bump it up to the next bid increment or not. And yet at the same time unlike the Heritage model, they have the exact times down to the second as to when each individual lot ends and their extended bidding session(s) begin. Hence, absolutely no waiting around for the books you are interested in as you know EXACTLY when each one of them will end.

That's what my initial thought was also, but not aware of any regular credit cards that accepts payments for $690K, let alone for $1.44M.

It actually looks like it's the hammer price plus another 23% on top, so I imagine the extra 3% must be for some type of payment fee. The site now shows the AF 15 with a hammer price of $575K with a final price of $707,250 while the Bat 1 had a hammer price of $1.2M with a final price of $1.476M, with both books getting an additional 2 bids during the extended bidding sessions.

That's why all of the major comic book auction houses run their auctions over multiple days which would take care of your concern. Instead, it sounds as though you have your 1,000 to 2,500 auction lots all initially set to end at the eact same time and then it's up to the bidders to keep track of all of the individual lots they are interested in. This sounds like a pretty formidable task for any potential bidder to be able to maneveur through, especially if they have a large number of books which they are interested in and most of them going into extended bidding. Sounds as though they just might need a whole lot more than 30 minutes based upon the auction format which you are using with all your hundreds, if not thousands of lots set to end at the same time prior to the extended bidding sessions. I guess this probably goes a long way to explain the low number of bids and extended bids which your lots tend to receive as compared to the other major auction houses like Heritage and CC where a lot of their bidding activity is actually done right at the end during the live or extended bidding sessions. Perfect examples being your CGC 8.5 graded copy AF 15 which received only 7 bids while a CGC 8.0 copy sold a few weeks ago at CC received 40 bids and your copy of Batman 1 received only 15 bids while the one auctioned off on CC recived a total of 65 bids.

Still, I think the point was made that the more valuable the book, the more likely it is graded. I would definitely agree with that last statement, but with one key qualifier in there. The more valuable the book, the more likely it is to be graded when it comes up for sale. Especially since I've always held the viewpoint that there's no real reason to have a book graded until it comes time for you to sell it. With the way the market has been going for the past few months though, I guess the one advantage though is that if a book gets hot, it makes it a whole lot faster and easier to place it into an auction instead of waiting countless months to get it back from grading in order to have it listed which by then might already be too late.

I was watching part of the live auction that day and believe that's exactly what happened with the Stevens artwork, but not sure about the Frazetta one because I hadn't signed it by then yet.

Actually, close to $1.5M with the BP juice in there, but not quite as per a post of mines from yesterday in another thread here:

Everything with every vendor is negotiable, but how well you'll do depends on the strength of your negotiating position. Just like the rules for Vegas whales aren't the rules for the hoi-polloi, big consignors or big bidders will be allowed flexibiliity that others won't. My one transaction was so long ago that I believe it was actually with Sotheby's, and resulted in me asking for a cancellaton of my auction win with a refund to be paid back to me. Couldn't have been Heritage since I don't think they were around back then in the early 90's when I was interested in the early historical books, and good thing that was only for a very short period of time as those books have gone absolutely nowhere from a valuation point of view. It was for a grouping of 20 low grade Famous Funnies books along with a Famous Funnies, Series 1 book which is recognized as being the third comic book to be published back in 1934. When I received my winning lot in the mail, it did include the 20 low grade Famous Funnies books along with a copy of Famous Funnies, A Carnival of Comics. Called them up only to be told that it shouldn't really matter since all of the books were there as listed, except for just one of them which was just a honest listing mistake. I told them that I didn't care about the other Famous Funnies books and the only book that I really wanted was the Series 1 since I already had nice copies of both Funnies on Parade and A Carnival of Comics which were the first 2 published comic books and I just wanted to complete the triple. They finally agreed when I told them that the Famous Funnies Series 1 was printed in bold letters as part of their lot description and their "fine print" stated that returns were allowed if errors were made in the bold print of their lot description. I guess I won that one there.

Are you saying that ALL of your individual auction lots ends at exactly the same time and then go into the 30-minute extended bidding sessions from that point on depending if there are any further bids? If so, that is indeed a ton of lots for a potential bidder to try to keep track of. In that case, the CC auction model would definitely be a lot better with lots ending something like 30 seconds after each other, with any further bidding on a lot resulting in an additional 3-minute extended bidding session.

Especially when some boardies here even complained about the 3 minute extended bidding which CC has in place, and one which I actually have absolutely no problems with. I guess with some of the in-demand books, they do tend to go on a long time when there's a whole ton of those multiple 3-minute bidding sessions on a book. Something which I am sure the consginors love, but not so much for the bidders.

Yeah, looks like this is where it finished up at in terms of a $1.2M hammer price for a final price of $1.44M including the 20% BP juice. Although I am sure the Larson pedigree bumped this copy up a bit, but if this is indeed the new representative price for a CGC 8.0 graded copy of Bat 1, it leaves me wondering what the lowest grade would be for a copy to cross the 7-figure mark? Would a CGC 7.0 graded copy be able to hit the million mark, or would it have to be at least a CGC 7.5 grade in order to do it?